Vistax64 Upgrade Plan

[Ev3nt H0riz0n]

I have bought 4GB of ram so I cant use all of it therefore I will upgrade to the 64bit version of vista. I have a 465GB Hard Drive on this pc with 111GB of it used by the Users and Program Files folders. All im planning to do is use the Vista Disk Management to shrink the C:/ Partition by 120GB then make a 120GB NTFS partition of the extra space. I will copy the Users and Program Files folders to that partition to back them up. I will proceed to nuke and pave the Vista32 partition with the Vista64. Once Vista64 is installed I will go into the 120GB partition to recover what I can recover onto Vista64. Once im done I will delete the 120GB partition using Vista Disk Management in Vista 64 and expand the volume to take up the entire drive.

Will this plan work?
Is there any chance I may run into problems?
Has anyone else tried this to quickly backup their data for an OS upgrade?

 

[RebateMonger]

I suggest spending $80 or so for an external 500 GB drive. Back up everything of value onto it. Install Vista 64, reformatting and repartitioning as desired. Copy back your backed up data. Use the external 500 GB drive to make ongoing backups of your PC.

If you do it that way, the risk of losing anything is pretty much zero, you are SURE you can get the end result you want, and you have a drive for making ongoing backups of your PC.

 

[KeypoX]

WD 640GB less than 75 http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822136218

seen it at lowest at 61 + tax

 

[Adam8281]

Here's what I would do:
1) Make a partition big enough to hold a Vista install
2) Install Vista x64 to that partition
3) Boot into Vista x64, and from there access and copy any files you need that are on the Vista x32 partition
4) Format the x32 partition, merge with the Vista x64 partiton
5)?
6) Profit

 

[Gooberlx2]

I agree with the suggestion for using an external USB HDD for backup (honestly, you should be doing backups anyway).

But if you're absolutely NOT going to do that, then I suggest defragging your hard drive as well as possible and using something like Gparted LiveCD for your partition manipulations.

 

[Ev3nt H0riz0n]

I did not consider attempting to dual boot Vista32 and Vista64 because the 120GB partition I was able to make on my 500gig HDD could not possibly hold the Vista64 installation + the files I transfer over. Doing that would require more partition alteration to get everything through and thus more risk to something going wrong. Also, I made an install of XP32 on an old 40gig IDE HDD just in case. In the end everything worked out. It took me about two days to get everything sorted through on the backup partition and then I simply deleted it and expanded the Vista 64 partition. I did download that Gparted LiveCD which is very useful for those times I am not working with a Vista install. Now I'm dual booting XP and Vista64 and I plan to get another old 80gig ide HDD and partition that in half to install Ubuntu Linux and Mac OSX.... not that I have any use for those operating systems its just that when someone asks me What OS do you run? I can say ALL of them!!!!!